


Darcy Lewis Gives Kick-Ass Back Rubs.

by Nemhaine42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton was asleep on the couch at 10am. This, in and of itself, was not that strange. A lifetime of poor sleeping habits meant Clint tended to just lie where he dropped. And, with no scheduled assignments, 10am was pretty standard. What was weird was that Natasha had been standing next to him for five whole minutes and he hadn’t so much as twitched. [Originally posted to Tumblr, moving it here during blog theme refurbishment.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darcy Lewis Gives Kick-Ass Back Rubs.

Darcy had had quite a few jobs in her short working life. She’d done waitressing, stacked shelves, answered phones, you name it. Those had come and gone, but her fall-back during the summer was working in her aunt’s health spa. It had been her first job ever to work reception there but, over the years, she’d picked up a whole bunch of stuff. Her Aunt Meryl was heavily into massage therapy; ranging from sports massage and acupressure to more esoteric concepts like Reiki. Darcy wasn’t sure if she believed in that but it all culminated in one thing: Darcy Lewis gave kick-ass back rubs.

Her therapeutic talents were a pretty well-kept secret. Few outside of her family knew and she was fine with that. It wasn’t her job, nor had she any intention to make it her job. But it did come in handy when Jane got too stressy or Erik had some kind of meltdown. Darcy liked being able to push a few ‘buttons’, as it were, to make her friends relax, especially since it helped Selvig retain the desire to wear pants.

Okay, her back rubs _had_ been a well-kept secret. Up until they’d been funded by Stark Industries and changed base to the tower; frequent trips upstate to unpolluted sky was a small price to pay for steady paychecks and high-tech accommodation. Moving was stressful, even without years’ worth of ground-breaking research and scientific equipment, so it had come as no surprise that Jane needed a little calming down. After seeing Jane turn to jelly in Darcy’s hands, Thor had asked for the same treatment. That had been a real red letter day but soon after there came requests from people who hadn’t previously been in on it. Pepper Potts came into their lab late one afternoon and politely inquired if Darcy was available, in exchange for baked goods. Maria Hill too. But she wasn’t expecting the knock on her door at a quarter to midnight, revealing one Avenger who had clearly seen better days.

“Hi. Uh, I don’t know if you remember… I was with SHIELD when you were in New Mexico…” he said.

“Yeah. Barton, right? Hawkeye?”

“Clint. Look, I know it’s late and this is probably really inappropriate but… I haven’t been able to sleep for three days… do you think you could,” he waved over his shoulder, “do the back rub thing? I really need to sleep.”

Sagged against her door frame, with dark circles and dry skin, he looked like he needed an entire month of sleep. So she herded him back downstairs to the common room - neutral territory - and guided him to the sofa.

\--

Clint Barton was asleep on the couch at 10am.

This, in and of itself, was not that strange. A lifetime of poor sleeping habits meant Clint tended to just lie where he dropped. And, with no scheduled assignments, 10am was pretty standard. What was weird was that Natasha had been standing next to him for five whole minutes and he hadn’t so much as twitched.

Was he dead? Nope, still visibly breathing. She doubted anyone had knocked him out; even sleep-deprived Clint was pretty hard to get around. Nor would any assailant have given him the opportunity to pull out the sofa-bed and take off his shirt. No signs of alcohol being involved. He might have finally caved and taken some sleeping pills, but why do that in the common room? He didn’t look ill either. In fact, he looked more rested and relaxed than she’d seen in weeks. Normally, Clint would have woken up if someone was hovering over him. But now, nothing. Even when Steve came in, and rattled around for a snack, he didn’t move a muscle.

“Is he okay?” Steve asked, crunching into an apple.

“He should be awake.”

Steve shrugged, “He’s been on ops all this week, right? The guy’s allowed to sleep.”

“I’ve been standing here for seven and a half minutes. You’ve been making noise. I’m making noise. He should have woken up. It’s not normal… for him.”

“Is he sick?”

“Don’t think so.”

Steve reached forward to give Barton a poke when Dr Foster and her team burst in on a coffee run. How three people managed to be so loud was astounding. The assistant caught a glimpse of Steve and Natasha and pointed a coffee-stained spoon at them.

“Don’t you go waking him up. I worked on him for an hour before I got him to doze off,” she said.

“Worked on him?” Natasha asked.

“Okay, it wasn’t exactly torture,” Darcy continued, gazing appreciatively over the back of the couch, “but an hour? Jesus Christ.”

Darcy turned and went back to making coffee, having a less than subtle conversation with Jane about how Clint had knocked on her door in the middle of the night, practically begging for a back rub to help him sleep.

“Back rub, huh?” asked Steve, with a goofy grin pulling at his mouth.

“Darcy gives _amazing_ back rubs, Cap,” Jane said, winking and nudging her assistant.

Darcy blushed a little but shrugged it off, “If it works on Thor, it’ll work on anybody.”

Natasha filed that away under ‘interesting’ and ‘future use’ but pointed out that Clint’s sleep cycle would be no better off if he slept all day.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Darcy conceded. She crouched by the sofa and ran her fingers through Barton’s hair, eliciting an intake of breath and his eyes pulling themselves open.

“Morning, Sleepy Head,” Darcy cooed, “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Coffee.”

Okay, _that_ was normal.

 


End file.
